{"id":3617,"date":"2012-04-30T16:42:38","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=3617"},"modified":"2023-03-28T18:05:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T22:05:16","slug":"tree-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/tree-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Sad Dinosaurs: Calling Bullshit on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a public service, I will now summarize all 2 hours and 19 minutes of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life<\/em> for you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mommy was pretty, my daddy was mean, sometimes kids die, I inhaled too much DDT, and it makes me so sad. Sad like the lonely birth of the lifeless universe. Sad like an anachronistic demonstration of animal altruism in the cruel dinosaur-eat-dinosaur prehistoric biosphere. Sad like the decay of all matter and energy as the universe inevitably collapses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I call bullshit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The degree of enjoyment I took from The Tree of Life<\/em> was in inverse proportion to the sense of obligation I felt to see it, which is to say: very little vs. a whole lot. The very private auteur Malick had fallen silent for a number of years after he burst out of the gate in the 70s with Badlands<\/em> and Days of Heaven<\/em>, but has been on something of an uncharacteristic tear lately, producing three films in 10 years, with more in the pipeline. Since he chooses to not participate in publicity for his films, we may have to wait years until we find out what motivated him to return from this mysterious interregnum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
No one was there to watch as the planets form from stardust… except Terrence Malick’s computers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anticipation high, The Tree of Life<\/em> was hotly discussed as his most beautiful, philosophical, and autobiographical film yet (the last point being especially tantalizing to film buffs looking for entry points into analyzing the man and his ouvre from a distance). The hook was further baited by the all-star cast (Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and it-girl-who’s-in-everything-these-days Jessica Chastain) and an awards campaign branding it as one of the key prestige pictures of 2011. The willingness of top-drawer talent to work with Malick, even if they may very well wind up on the cutting room floor (as happened to George Clooney in The Thin Red Line<\/em>), suggests he is revered as a director of actors. The perennially prickly Sean Penn, however, had none of this. He publicly derided the completed film:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

While [Penn] considered the script “the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read,” he believes that “a clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact.” Noting that Malick himself was little help when it came to explaining what he was going for, Penn adds, “Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context.”<\/p>\nSean Penn, to The A.V. Club<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

All of Malick’s films are inarguably staggeringly beautiful, but their flimsy substance would get laughed out of a high school creative writing class. The Thin Red Line<\/em> provided a much-needed meditative counterpoint at the time to the comparatively sentimental Saving Private Ryan<\/em>, but too much of the film was taken up with the private thoughts of inarticulate grunts struggling to understand why they were killing each other when they’d all be much happier as cinematographers filming wildlife and sunlight filtering prettily through treetops. The New World<\/a><\/em> approached outright silliness in its portrayal of Pocahontas as a pimply teenager in leather lingerie, caught in a love triangle over two of her European oppressors, and became truly absurd as the film contorted itself to avoid speaking her name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jessica
I want to equate these two shots to the famous jump cut from prehistoric man to a spaceship in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>, but I just don’t respect The Tree of Life <\/em>enough.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There’s something to be said about Malick deconstructing two of the most overused subjects in Hollywood history (the World War II picture and the Pocahontas myth) for his own personal statements, but critics must really strain for these to hold up to discussion in serious philosophical terms. The Niles Files makes a valiant attempt<\/a> to tackle The Tree of Life<\/em>, looping in Blake, Proust, Joyce, and many other big guns to extract some meaning from Malick’s pretty pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tree of Life<\/em> was part of a miniature trendlet in movies this past year, in which the painfully intimate was equated with the distantly cosmic. Sadly, two better films with similar concerns were unjustly crowded out of the award season — curiously, both featuring young women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mike Cahill’s Another Earth<\/em>, a girl whose carelessness ruined several lives finds hope for redemption when an exact duplicate of the entire planet inexplicably appears in the sky. Like everyone that has ever lived, she wonders if maybe there’s a better world where things turned out differently. For Cahill, it would have superfluous to concoct a pseudoscientific explanation for the phenomena, but another filmmaker that same year turned to physicists to properly substantiate his cosmic visions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia<\/em> is exactly that — a painful but stunningly beautiful examination of crippling depression. One young woman’s mental illness all but splinters her extended family, a destruction so cataclysmic it is reflected in the eradication of the world. Von Trier harnesses computer animation for images of profoundly moving beauty, rendering Malick’s mopey CGI dinos silly in comparison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a public service, I will now summarize all 2 hours and 19 minutes of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life for you: My mommy was pretty, my daddy was mean, sometimes kids die, I inhaled too much DDT, and it makes me so sad. Sad like the lonely birth of the lifeless universe. Sad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[1550,140,1554,1553,1551,1552,547,1346],"class_list":["post-3617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-stars","category-movies","tag-1550","tag-brad-pitt","tag-depression","tag-dinosaurs","tag-jessica-chastain","tag-metaphysics","tag-sean-penn","tag-terrence-malick"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/the-tree-of-life.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-Wl","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":108,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-new-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":0},"title":"The New World","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"December 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Why didn't I know better? Although I stand apart from nearly all (it seems) critics and fellow cineastes, I disliked Terrence Malick's Badlands, Days of Heaven, and Thin Red Line. And The New World is, of course, more of the same. The problem isn't necessarily the pacing, although it is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The New World","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/12\/new-world.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/12\/new-world.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/12\/new-world.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/12\/new-world.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/12\/new-world.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5737,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/taika-waititi-mocks-the-devil-in-jojo-rabbit\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":1},"title":"Taika Waititi mocks the devil in Jojo Rabbit","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"November 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Perhaps unfairly, a couple external factors negatively affected my experience of Jojo Rabbit: The Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse programmed the trailer for Terrence Malick's forthcoming A Hidden Life before Jojo Rabbit, throwing a spotlight on the \"good German\" trope they both share. Of course, both quiet and loud German resistance to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "3 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"3 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/3-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Jojo Rabbit","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/jojo-rabbit.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/jojo-rabbit.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/jojo-rabbit.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/jojo-rabbit.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/jojo-rabbit.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":318,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-dork-report-for-july-13-2006\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":2},"title":"The Dork Report for July 13, 2006","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"July 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A Geographical Study of Lost (warning: very large image download). Despite the massive wealth of information, it still can't explain the greatest mystery yet: why Mr. Friendly was nominated for an Emmy and not, say, Michael Emerson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, or Terry O'Quinn (not to mention the show itself). (guest submission\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Dork Report"","block_context":{"text":"The Dork Report","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/dork-report\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Dork Report","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/dork-report.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/dork-report.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/dork-report.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/dork-report.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/dork-report.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4082,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/songs-that-broke-my-heart\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":3},"title":"The Songs That Broke My Heart","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"March 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Rock 'n' roll is not an everyday conversation topic around our family table, but the improbable longevity of The Rolling Stones was remarkable enough to come up once during dinner. I had recently listened to \"Sympathy for the Devil\" for the first time in a while, and remarked upon how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/main-menu\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Nick Drake","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/nick-drake.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/nick-drake.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/nick-drake.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/nick-drake.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/nick-drake.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1965,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/avatar\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":4},"title":"This’ll Ruin My Day: James Cameron Goes Down the Digital Rabbit Hole in Avatar","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"January 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Avatar is the perfect distillation of all of James Cameron's worst tendencies: an obsession with the marine corps (while trying to have it both ways: worshipping the hardware and lingo, but casting them as villains), embarrassingly heinous dialogue (undercutting every dramatic moment with somebody droning flat one-liners like \"oh shit\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"2 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/2-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Avatar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/avatar.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/avatar.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/avatar.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/avatar.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/avatar.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1721,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/happy-go-lucky\/","url_meta":{"origin":3617,"position":5},"title":"Sally Hawkins Finds a New Opportunity in Every Setback in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"April 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a creature rarely encountered in movies and even less often in real life: someone genuinely happy. She's not bothered by others' life goals; at 30, she doesn't have a baby or a boyfriend, own a house, or know how to drive, and none of these concerns\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "4 Stars"","block_context":{"text":"4 Stars","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/category\/ratings\/4-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sally Hawkins in Happy Go Lucky","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/happy-go-lucky-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/happy-go-lucky-feature.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/happy-go-lucky-feature.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/happy-go-lucky-feature.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/happy-go-lucky-feature.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8454,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions\/8454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}